


A Misunderstanding, Perhaps

by Ladidumm



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Gen, Spoilers, spoilers for S3 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 13:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladidumm/pseuds/Ladidumm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reputation takes a lifetime to build. Someone's perception of you can take just as long to cement to your liking. Reputation is just an extension of perception, after all. It's just as easy to shatter. All it takes is one event.</p>
<p>AR should have known this was a bad gamble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Misunderstanding, Perhaps

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously. MAJOR spoilers for season 3 finale. Also, first story for this fandom. Not sure how to get into it, honestly, but this show is brilliant. Not actually sure how Rothstein would refer to himself, so I went with AR.

When you look at a person, you very rarely see them. You see what they were when you first saw them, what you heard about them, what they’ve done, what you’ve done, and more besides. The thing that you really see is who you want them to be. Or, rather, you see them how you want to see them. Once you’ve decided to see someone a certain way, for most people, that perception is incredibly difficult to change. And once it’s changed, it’s usually permanent. It takes a certain kind of person to see people as they really are, to change their perception on a moment by moment basis. And even they are prone to projection.

 

Charlie “Lucky” Luciano is not one of those kind of people. He has never been. Impressions stay with him, and while he can understand that people change and react to it, react to them, enough to get by, once they have a solidly established base that base is rock solid. It’s almost funny, how easily he trusts.

 

AR knows all of this, so he doesn’t know why watching Charlie’s view of him break apart bothers him. But it does, and that shouldn’t be happening. Did Charlie not see this coming? Did he think he would forget? Ambition can be misread as impatience but AR knows about last year and they tried to shoot Nucky Thompson. And. He’s not ready to die, not yet. Not when he hasn’t done… he doesn’t know, but there will be something. And he brought Charlie and Meyer in, and he forgave them, but he didn’t forget and they just wouldn’t listen to him. So he made them. And he knew Meyer would disapprove, so for Charlie to bite, he just had to keep not listening. And he did. He didn’t listen.

 

It was for Charlie’s own good, really. And there was always the possibility, the probability of Charlie being hurt, but this breaking in his eyes? That wasn’t planned. That’s not fair. How dare he. AR doesn’t like this, doesn’t like what that makes him feel, so he makes Charlie hurt. He takes the words that he knows will ruin, words that he’s saved up and buried deep because they do more than cut they poison. They lay waste and then salt the ground and they cannot be moved past. AR takes those words and he tosses them out, casually, in front of all the people Charlie doesn’t want to hear them, and he makes him hurt.

 

Meyer will understand, he knows. Maybe not the words at the end, but he’ll understand the rest. You adapt and learn or you die, there is no other option, and they were heading down the wrong road. As for Charlie… well.

 

The words that hurt the most always have a grain of truth to them.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, you've read the entire thing, so I'll confess. I have no Beta, because I have no friends who have gotten this far. And this was written while still feeling the effects of Gravol, a motion sickness medicine. Makes me extremely drowsy. Also, if anyone actually bothered enough to read this fic and tolerated it enough to read this, and they for some reason were kind enough to share title suggestions, I would be extremely grateful. Seriously. I'd offer to write for you, but I don't think you'd want it.


End file.
